In the “Reply to this thread” box below, click on the bass clef. Then copy and paste that staff into your word processor. (I use Open Office but I think Word would work as well.)

Select all the text and set font and size to Courier New, 10 points. (This font keeps everything formatted and spaced correctly. Other fonts don't!)

This is optional: I like to divide the staff into measures using 8 or 16 dashes per measure; use the vertical bar (above the enter key on my keyboard) for measure markers. I also try to indicate timing in the line below the staff. I use + marks on the beats; a more helpful indicator is how Loudlon does it: 1&2&amp&4& beneath each measure.

Copy and paste to get a full-page-width staff, then save it.

To tab, open this up, save it under a new name (e.g. the name of the song being tabbed) and replace dashes with fretting positions as appropriate.

Getting the template is a bit of effort, but once you've got it, noting down the fretting is pretty straight-forward.

Cheers.

edit: The smiley face in the counting is an automatic and unfortunate formatting consequence of being able to emoticons in postings. It should be a three.